Long Time Blooming

Artificial flowers got their start in the 1940s in the millinery business as decorations for women’s hats. Eventually hats went out of style, but the silk flowers stayed.

* The 1950s ushered in big, bright plastic daisies and sunflowers. (They are now kitsch.)

* Porcelain flowers were popular in the late ‘60s, but were high-priced and shattered easily.

* By the 1980s, attempts to reproduce nature had improved with polished cotton and delicate-weave polyester blends.

* Today, the hot, new wave is parchment covered with a thin latex. Designers also are creating flowers that have never existed in nature, such as blue roses with eight-foot stems.

Source: Catherine Hillen-Rulloda, Southern California School of Floral Design, Fullerton